Between Heartbeats (or, Five Times Clint Barton's life changed)
by Michelle
Summary: Fittingly enough for a sniper, his life seems to take place in the space between heartbeats. The irony isn't lost on him.
1. Crash

**Between Heartbeats**

_Or, Five Times Clint Barton's life changed_.

Fittingly enough for a sniper, his life seems to take place in the space between heartbeats. The irony isn't lost on him.

For the cottoncandy-bingo prompt "Heartache". Fill for my Wild Card spot!

I'll be posting the rest of this as I finish editing. Thanks for reading!

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The blood running down his face makes him feel like he's crying, except he doesn't do that, hasn't done that in years because Daddy doesn't like it when boys cry. He also doesn't like it when they call him Daddy instead of Dad or sir (because it's always _yes, sir, no, sir_ at the end of every sentence, always, always, always), but he's not so good at remembering that. Barney remembers, but Barney's seven and goes to school and they teach him how to remember things like the names for colors and shapes and all those squiggles that get mixed up inside his head when he tries to understand them.

Daddy . . . Dad says that the teachers are idiots who don't know nothing about anything, and that his boys should stay at home and learn real things, important things like shooting and hunting, but after the old lady with the blue hair and the purple suit came to visit, Barney started going to the school in town and Clint had to stay at home with Mommy all alone, helping her keep everything clean.

He likes staying at home with Mommy, likes singing with her while they scrub the floors and iron the drapes. He also likes baking, likes measuring and pouring and mixing, but Mommy always tells him that he's not allowed to tell anybody about that, and she always makes double sure to scrub his hands and change his shirt before Daddy gets home from work.

There's too much blood in his eyes, and he swipes at it, but that just makes it worse and now there's some in his mouth.

He spits before he remembers that you aren't supposed to do that kind of thing in the car, but Daddy's not moving in the front seat, so maybe he didn't notice yet and Clint won't get punished.

Clint struggles to move, but he can't really feel his right arm and the seat buckle is too hard for him to open without both hands. He strains his head, looking over to the seat beside him where Barney is supposed to be.

He starts to realize that there's a buzzing in his ears when he notices Barney leaning over the seat back in front of him. Barney's shaking Mommy's shoulder and his mouth is open, and Clint knows that he should hear something, that Barney's shouting, but he can't hear a single thing over the buzz, the hum, the ringing in his ears.

The flashing red and blue lights are the last thing he remembers before he slips into blackness, but he will always remember them. They haunt him for the rest of his life.


	2. Circus

The buzzing in his ears never really goes away, but he gets used to it, learns how to use it to help him focus. It's the one part of not being able to hear that he likes because it lets him to drown out the world and focus all of his considerable attention on a single spot, a fixed point in space until there isn't anything except him and his target.

Duquesne likes that about him, thinks it's a marketable skill.

When he and Barney joined up with Duquesne, they hadn't expected much. But then, they hadn't really needed much. They just wanted to be somewhere, anywhere other than that ancient house with the woman and her greasy husband with the grabby hands.

Duquesne isn't much better, farms him out to this cheesy carnie freak who calls himself "Trick Shot" and maybe they aren't the greatest role models in the world, but at least the only thing they do to him with their hands is smack him around a bit. If nothing else, his father taught him how to deal with that.

And then there's the archery.

He's never been good at anything before. Not a single damn thing. He's sixteen years old, has never gone to school, can barely read, and even though he's pretty damn decent with a sword, he'll never be a master.

But archery . . .

It's as natural as breathing, an extension of his arm, no, an extension of his mind, and the first time he raises and draws a bow is the last time he ever feels troubled about his place in the world.

Unsure, yes, of course, constantly unsure. But archery dispels all the agitation and disquiet that's harassed him, dogged his heels since . . . well, since the crash. He can lose himself to the nock and release of arrows, can forget that he doesn't have parents, that his brother is kind of a jackass, and he's still got two more years until he can enlist in the army and get the fuck out of this shithole, throwback circus.

He's so drawn to archery, in fact, that he doesn't even notice that Duquesne is stealing from the circus until he walks in on him rooting through the contents of Chisholm's safe.

Things go downhill from there, but when the dust settles, Duquesne is gone and Clint has two black eyes, a couple bruised ribs, and a leg that's either broken or fractured.

Somehow, it still feels like he's gotten off easy.

Chisholm drives him to the hospital in the back of his rusty pickup, and Clint is so light headed that he can barely keep himself upright., but his stomach clenches and his heart skips every time Chisholm hits a bump in the road. Clint really hates throwing up.

The doctors patch him up without checking to see if he can pay for it, and Clint manages not to feel too guilty when Chisholm sneaks him out a side door.

They catch up to the rest of the circus by morning.


	3. Bullseye

_Two more parts to go! Thanks for sticking with me! And tons of love for the favorites and the reviews ALREADY! You guys are the best!_

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His brother has always been something of a jackass, but he's still able to surprise him.

They lost touch after Chisholm died – the older man was the only thing that kept Barney around as it turned out, and his brother was in the wind before the body was even cold.

Fine by Clint, really. They didn't have anything in common beyond an unfortunate set of shared genes and a predilection for arrows, and even that manifested itself differently in Barney.

They'd both trained hard under Chisholm, but only Clint learned how to be the "World's Greatest Marksman!" and with the title came the attention and the glory, such as it was.

Most of the time, it just meant he got hit in the stomach instead of his head or arms.

Barney, though, he craved the attention, thrived on it even. When he didn't get it, well, resentment brewed, and Clint learned to check over his bow and quiver carefully before shows.

Clint never liked that life, not really, didn't like living from town to town, score to score, always on the run from whoever and whatever they left behind. So when Chisholm was gone, he took a page from his brother and walked directly from the funeral home to the nearest army recruitment office.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Two years after he started working for SHIELD, Clint runs into his brother in a back alley in Zagreb, finds him with his hand in the metaphorical cookie jar, stealing technical plans for some new kind of liquid armor that Fury's interested in.

That Clint is there to do the same thing is beside the point.

They end up fighting, for keeps instead of the only half-serious fighting they used to do back in the circus. Barney is a dirty fighter, aims for every scar and old injury on Clint's body, and Clint has to put some distance between them or he's going to end up dead.

Clint has always been the better marksman, quicker, more accurate, deadlier, and it doesn't take much for him to corner Barney.

They argue, and it's stupid, just like it's always been between them, but Clint barely recognizes the man Barney has become.

No, actually, that's a lie. He does; he buried that man twenty years ago. And maybe hard living does that to people, but Clint got out, and until now, he's been pretending that Barney did the same.

But then his brother reaches for a knife instead of letting the argument and the schematics go.

He doesn't want to do it. He would rather do anything else. Anything. But Barney, no, _Trickshot_, will not quit, will not stop _ever_ until he's dead. Barney will dog this until his dying breath. He will track Clint down, make good on the promise to slit his throat. Clint has no choice left.

As if there was ever any question, his arrow finds his mark.


	4. Faraway

He catches up to her, finally, wandering through the streets of Rome. He tails her, following along on rooftops, and when she turns down an alley, he takes his chance.

First, he reaches up, clicks off his hearing aids, and then he breathes deep, feels himself slow, feels the world contract around him. He could keep track of the passage of time by the beats of his heart if he wanted to.

He doesn't, though, pushes everything but the shock of her red hair aside, and he waits until she steps into range. He nocks an arrow, draws, his heartbeat slowing to a crawl, and he's just about to release when she turns. He can see her face, and something in it makes him pause.

Pause, but not stop.

He pins her to the wall with an arrow through the shoulder. Because he's feeling kind or stupid (maybe both), he aims for her right side.

She's not even angry by the time he makes it from the roof of the building down to where she tugs ineffectually at the arrow holding her prisoner.

He'd expected her to foaming at the mouth by now, but she looks at him without a trace of anger or resentment or anything, really. She just looks at him. He returns the favor, notices that she's even prettier from up close, better looking than the pictures in her dossier suggest. He can't put his finger on it, not yet, but there's something about her expression that smacks of the familiar.

She blinks once, slowly, licks her lips.

"Are you going to do it?"

He's glad he turned his hearing aids back on before he slid down the fire escape because her voice is a melody, a Russian tune that twists his stomach in a strange direction.

He doesn't reply, doesn't have the words, still isn't sure what he's thinking.

She continues, "If you're going to do it, I would really prefer you get it over with. I'm not terribly patient."

It's true. She isn't. Two weeks ago in Madrid, he'd watched her lose patience, forgo waiting for her target to be alone in favor of tearing through his six bodyguards and stabbing him in the eye with the heel of her shoe. He knows that she's dangerous even now, with her upper arm pierced through and stuck fast to the brick behind her.

She's not doing anything, though, and he still hasn't pulled his gun. They size each other up for what could be an hour, but might only be ten minutes (only two, he discovers later). Then Coulson's voice crackles to life in his ear.

"Agent Barton?" he asks, his cool voice bringing Clint back to reality. "Barton, report."

Clint clears his throat before he speaks. "This is Barton. Subject is . . ." he starts, but he doesn't know how to finish that sentence. She smirks at his hesitation, and then he knows.

It's not that she's beautiful or that she's a woman or any chauvinistic horseshit like that. He doesn't care about any of that. He's been watching her for weeks, and he's seen her kill, seen her silent, brutal efficiency.

He knows now that he stayed his hand because he knows that look, the one she's giving him now, the one she's worn every time he's laid eyes on her. After all, he's worn it his whole life.

"Subject is in custody, sir. Two for extraction."

Much later, weeks, months, years later, she lays across his chest, trails her fingers down the faded scar along his ribs.

"Car crash," is all he says, but she's read his file by now, she knows exactly what that tone in his voice means. He doesn't have to explain it because she knows that tone herself, has used it her entire life.

She kisses him in the dark, and he lets himself forget.

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_The last part of this is baby fic, so if that's not your cup of tea, proceed no further. _

_Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you think!_


	5. Sunshine

_And the last part! Thanks for reading! If you feel so inclined, I'd love to hear what you think!_

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His daughter shouldn't exist, but she does.

They've both had a lot of things happen to them in their lives, things that should have prevented either one of them from having children, so it came as something of a shock when Natasha found out she was pregnant.

But she was and now she isn't and he's holding his daughter in his arms and he's pretty sure he's going to cry any second now.

Third time's a charm, after all.

She makes a thin, mewling noise, and he can feel the telltale pinpricks behind his eyes. Tiny and pale with milky blue eyes and wispy red fuzz covering her head, the little improbability blinks up at him and yawns. His heart skips a beat at that, actually stops and clenches before it starts back up because, fuck, he can't believe he had anything to do with making this perfect creature.

And perfect she is, from the tip of her pointy head to the ends of her wrinkled toes. Even the way she gurgles and smacks her lips as she closes her eyes is perfect.

Nat's resting on the bed, half-dozing while he holds the baby (_their_ baby, Jesus fucking Christ, what parallel world has he walked into?), and maybe he's getting maudlin in his old age because his heart is kind of swelling, like it can't hold that much inside of it, like there just isn't enough space to contain everything he's feeling right now.

Evelyn Barton is barely a day old, and he's in love. Head over heels, heart achingly, desperately, completely in love. He's never felt anything quite like it, doesn't know how to process it, but that's okay because she's the best damn thing that's ever happened to him even if he is scared shitless.

"Hey," Natasha croaks. He manages to tear his eyes away from his daughter long enough to look at his partner.

His jaw hurts from all the grinning he's been doing, but he smiles at her anyway. "Hey, you." He shifts from his chair to the bed, and Natasha sleepily scoots over to make more room for him.

"You look good like that," she says as he reclines beside her. Once he's settled, she pillows her head on his shoulder, looks down at the bundle of blankets and sweetness that is her daughter, sound asleep on his chest.

"She looks like you," he says, running his thumb gently across Evie's tiny head.

"You only say that because she's got red hair. That nose is yours." Natasha stops talking for a second, and he thinks she's done, but then she adds, "And the pointy head thing, too. That's all you."

He snorts, and the baby opens her eyes a fraction, crinkles her forehead, and for a moment, he thinks she might start crying. But then Natasha strokes the little girl's back - long, soothing motions accompanied by a string of slow syllables, and Evie's inconceivably small forehead smoothes out, her eyes drift back shut and Clint is pretty sure she starts snoring.

So yeah. Definitely his daughter.

He knows he should be more worried about this than he is right now. He should be worried that someone is going to take her or hurt her or worse, all because of who he is, who Natasha is. He should be worried that he's going to fuck up this whole "being a dad" thing because, really, look at the men who raised him. Look at what happened to them.

He tries to shove them down, those worries, but still there's a latent desire to get up, check the perimeter of the room, maybe take a walk up and down the hall to make sure that the SHIELD facility where Natasha gave birth is really as secure as he thought it was six months ago.

Instead, he just lies still, quiet and warm and kind of sick to his stomach with his daughter on his chest and Natasha pressed against his side, feeling like the luckiest son of a bitch to ever walk the earth. Besides, he knows of at least six lethal weapons within arm's distance, and he's sure Natasha has even more than that secreted around the room.

Long after he thinks she's fallen asleep, Natasha leans up, hovers over him. "You know I love you, right?"

She's never said it, not aloud, and he's known it practically forever, but to hear the words, finally, after so much . . . His heart stops, stalls in his chest, and he feels the world shift around him. Fittingly enough for a sniper, his life seems to take place in the space between heartbeats. The irony isn't lost on him.

"Love you, too, babe," he says, meaning it more than he ever has. Then he looks down at their daughter where she lays with her face pressed into his chest.

"Fuck, Nat."

Natasha sighs. "Yeah, pretty much."


End file.
